Pros & Cons of Internet use in Business

McKeown, Karen, Grand Rapids Business Journal, 10454055, 07/16/98, Vol. 16, Issue 27

Although many businesses use the Internet and Telephones every day in their workplace, and even rely on it a massive amount, do the pro’s outweigh the cons? 

McKeown outlines some of the positives and negatives of internet use for businesses. Some of the main points that stood out to me where as follows:

Positives; Locating addresses, maps and business profiles, Downloading software, Finding partners for subcontracting, Receiving product and vendor information, Confidently posting employee schedules, Enhancing company image with the ability to communicate on a worldwide basis. Also, in particular, Email with it’s long list of advantages such as Fast, cheap and immediate direct communication with employees, suppliers and customers, Rapid exchange of data files and Immediate bill service information.

But with all of those advantages, what disadvantages could there possibly be? 

Ric Campbell, of Moss Telecommunications Services, attempted to put the Internet in perspective for users everywhere. "The Internet is the most powerful informational tool on the planet," he said. "Never in history has anything pulled so many people together.

There are concerns about security, lower employee productivity and cost-benefit ratios that companies using the internet have to face. There is so much information available to employees, how do businesses tackle the viewing of unacceptable materials on computers whilst in the workplace?

Although there has been many attempts at company safeguard and acceptable use policies in workplaces, this can also become a problem as site blocking starts to come into place and employees may need access to a certain site every once in a while, depending upon the type of work. 

There is also a problem in terms of speed. Searches may be made faster but phone companies can’t always keep up with it. Sites can go down and cause problems for businesses and that’s all down to the phone connections, causing inconsistency. 

John Rapport, of ITS Communications, said that even though the company had a phone line dedicated to the Internet in order to speed searches, "communication is slower than I would like because communication is often bottlenecked at the service providers.”

Although there may be a lot of advantages to the internet, and the majority of businesses wouldn’t be able to operate without it, it still isn’t perfect and remains inconsistent. The pace that the internet grows, however, can only resolve a lot of problems in the long run and I, personally, think that the positives outweigh the negatives. I think that to sacrifice a few days of problems compared to not having a business at all is just a small fee to pay. 

Although, outside of business, is the internet growing so much necessarily a good thing? Especially with all of the new technology enabling people to anonymously post things online and have access to a wide range of potentially dangerous material if in the wrong hands.